


Knife in the Desert

by ProwlingThunder



Category: Gundam Wing, Trigun
Genre: Crash Survivor, Gen, Surviving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up in the remains of a ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knife in the Desert

He wakes up in the shattered husk, the remains of a ship, barely held together through the ages, and he thinks, _we crashed_. It's logical, though of course it doesn't make sense. He steps out of his cryotube and wanders along the others, shivering, searching for stored personal affects and other living people. He finds little, and quite a few skeletons in empty glass caskets.

A couple exploratory scouting jobs lets him find the exits of the ship; the drive core broke off, _no wonder we crashed_ , that portion of the ship is just an open, gaping hole that lets sand lick his toes. The hatches that were originally intended to let the sleeping passengers off are welded shut by the passage of time. Exploration outside reveals the ship to be mostly buried under a bunch of dunes, so that's probably a good thing.

He finds the seed library, canisters of animal DNA, most of them deteriorated beyond salvageable. He catalogs what isn't, keeps exploring, but marks the location in his mental map. Space-dried foods eventually turn up, and he munches on them while he looks around. Caretaker facilities, the medical ward-- most of the supplies is still intact, it could be useful. 

He ends up making clothes out of bedsheets. He spent time in the desert before, he knows how to dress. There's tons of water, more than he can reasonably drink even if he spent the next ten years here. There's no way he can bury the wells whole, not with them full, but he can bury the ship's purification system, and he knows the theory of glass-making, he can do it that way. It's not like there's a shortage of sand.

Eventually he understands the stars. He maps caches with unfamiliar constellations, buries MREs and glass jars of water. He builds a few underground one-room safe houses, a few paces wide, long, deep. He rips out the seed library, the genetic storage, and he buries those too. Then he goes digging for more useful things, and hides it all.

When he's done, he takes some more of his rations and starts marching, adding more caches, marking them with glass carefully stained green.

He eventually ends up in a town that feels like he stepped into the Earth's old west, or some of the early towns on Mars. It's a quiet enough town; there's a saloon, a tiny little inn, and a perpetual fear of someone named Vash the Stampede, which he only learns because there are a pair of insurance agents in the saloon when he stops in for a drink. Water is precious and scarce, so he drinks beer as they question him and he tells them he doesn't know anything, but anyone with that much money on their heads is unlikely to go around announcing their name to the world.

Later, after the gunfight, after the two insurance women snag their guy, Millie and Meryl ask him his name while he's collecting his knives. 

“My name? Trowa Barton.” He hadn't had one for the longest time, but Trowa had been his for a good while now, too.

“Those were good throws, Trowa.”

He lets a quiet pride fill him. It's nice to know he hasn't lost his touch. Of course, the other ends of those throws wont be complimenting him...


End file.
